Emergency Conference Of The Fourth International

Resolution On The French Section

Adopted by the Emergency Conference of the Fourth InternationalMay 19-26, 1940

Having taken cognizance of the Political Report as well as the report on activity submitted by the Central Committee of the Committees of the Fourth International (French section), the Emergency Conference of the Fourth International resolves:

1. To greet the French comrades and to assure them that every effort will be made henceforth to aid them in every possible way.

2. To commend them for their energetic work carried on heroically under illegal conditions.

3. In view of the political line expressed in the letters of Gilbert,

a) To condemn the Gilbert tendency of the Central Com-mittee for its defeatist position with regard to the USSR and for its attempt to contravene the line of the First World Con-gress of the Fourth International in this respect.

b) To commend the Gilbert tendency for its organizational loyalty to the Fourth International as expressed in the com-ments of Gilbert regarding the factional struggles within the Socialist Workers Party of the United States.

c) To inform the French section that the democratic guaran-tees proposed in their Political Report for a solution of the struggle have been met by the convention of the SWP held at the conclusion of a seven months’ discussion and have been rejected by the splitters of the Shachtman-Burnham minority.

d) To request the Gilbert tendency to publicly disassociate itself from the splitters in the SWP.

4. To inform the French section of the circumstances sur-rounding the holding of the Emergency Conference of the Fourth International and to inform it further that until such a time as a full-scale congress of the Fourth International is made fea-sible, the decisions of the first congress, further confirmed by this Emergency Conference, are binding upon all sections.

5. To remind the French section that the American minority, completely supported by Gilbert in its defeatist position on the USSR, challenged the whole conception of Marxist politics and revealed itself as a centrist tendency; to advise the French section that a continued pursuit of the line contained in the Gilbert letter can lead only to the same centrist swamp.